Early Reality Fracture Data Highlights Biggest Traps To Avoid

Last updated on September 24, 2026

Heartstring Puller | Illustration by Jessica Liu

Generally in Limited, you want the first pick out of your pack to be something powerful. Sometimes, the choice is easy. You open an undeniable bomb, something like Sphinx of False Conclusions and so you take it. Not much thinking required there. 

But sometimes you open your first pack and the decision is a lot less obvious. One mistake many drafters make is that when they are confronted with these unclear packs, they still take the rare. As for why this happens, there's probably a few reasons and it probably varies from person to person, but I think as a general rule it's safe to say that there is an unconscious bias towards rares. We understand that they are more powerful, that there are far fewer of them, and therefore they draw our attention.

However, oftentimes it is incorrect to do this. It varies from card to card, set to set, circumstance to circumstance, but knowing when to leave a rare in the pack for an uncommon is a key part of the discipline it takes to be a good Magic player.

I bring this up because looking at the early data we have on Reality Fracture from thousands of simulated drafts here on Draftsim, I see there are certainly trends that show people falling into this trap with a few key cards that I don't think are worth taking so highly, and I think being aware of these pitfalls is important if you plan on drafting this set when it comes out.

Highly Picked, Underpowered

According to our internal data, Germinate Recruits is currently the card that is drafted earliest in the pack after only The Theorist, Jace Beleren. However, unlike The Theorist, Jace Beleren which is a great card no matter how you slice it, Germinate Recruits is highly situational.

Don't get me wrong, situational cards can be good, especially one like this where you can build your deck in such a way as to manufacture favorable situations–in this case just playing a lifegain deck. But just because a card has a high ceiling doesn't mean it's worth taking, or at least, worth taking first, which is what people seem to be doing.

The fundamental problem with this type of card is that a lot of the time it will do absolutely nothing. If you gain no life, this makes no creatures. The problem is not that this card is picked at all, but rather that it's prioritized so highly, as you shouldn't really be spending an early pick on a card that will be useless in a lot of decks, and a dead card some of the time even in the right deck.

There are a few other cards that fit into a similar spot of being picked very early and being highly situational. Flickering Hound is another card that won't do much without proper deckbuilding and set up, and yet its average pick is 2.05 according to our early internal data. I know it's flashy and a fun effect, but I doubt it will ever be the right decision to pick this card second, as its fail case is being a highly overcosted 2/2.

Common Woes

Rares aren't the only cards that get overdrafted, and just looking at the data I can already see a few cards at common that are being picked far too highly. Greenhouse Propagator and Keeper of the Quiet Hour. These seem like fairly big outliers, in that while these cards certainly have their place and are by no means unplayable, they should not have an average pick rate of 3.35 and 3.4 respectively.

As for why people seem to prioritize Greenhouse Propagator, your guess is as good as mine, although I will say that people tend to over-value lifegain effects like these. I recall in Secrets of Strixhaven that despite the Witherbloom lifegain deck being pretty much the worst archetype for most of the format, Bogwater Lumaret was still drafted far higher than it should have been.

Keeper of the Quiet Hour is a different situation, and I really can't figure out why it's prioritized so highly, as I can't imagine that most packs won't have a better early pick than this. Perhaps the fact that its colorless drives up its numbers, as you can play it in any deck. However, if you're taking this card early because there aren't any other cards in your colors, it may be a sign that you should swap lanes and/or speculate on a different pick with higher upside. I find a lot of drafters are apprehensive to do this, often hard-committing to their first couple picks, and I think this is a mistake that can lead to drafting less good cards earlier than is necessary as is the case with Keeper of the Quiet Hour

Wrap Up

Flickering Hound | Illustration by Chris Rahn

Ultimately, this is all speculation. The set is not out yet, this is all data from simulated drafts, and compared to the data that we will have once the set is actually out, we're also dealing with a relatively small sample size here, even if it is data from thousands of drafts. That being said, I would not be surprised to see some of these trends reemerge once the set is released. Drafting is difficult, and choosing which card to pick is a decision that sometimes has no right answer, or at least, no simple answer.